The present invention relates to a process for the secure management of the execution of an application. The invention concerns the domain of cellular telephony and more specifically that of intelligent terminals connected to cellular telephony networks. A terminal referred to herein as “intelligent” is a mobile telephone capable of downloading multimedia or active content. The term “active content” refers to a program capable of being executed on a mobile telephone and consequently of implementing the functionalities of the said mobile telephone. It shall be considered that all telephones referred to herein are intelligent terminals. An intelligent telephone enables the management of different internal resources, accessible from the different extension ports or by the downloaded multimedia or active content. This definition does not limit the scope of the invention.
One aim of the invention is to secure the access to the mobile telephone's resources by the programs being executed on the said mobile telephone.
Background art systems implement secured code execution environments. These environments are based on the implementation of a “virtual machine” that is a layer on top of the mobile telephone's operating system. This virtual machine executes programs that are written specifically for it. The virtual machine is therefore a prerequisite for the implementation of these programs. The virtual machine is an intermediary between the specific program and the mobile telephone's operating system, in other words between the specific program and the mobile telephone's functionalities.
However, the fact that a telephone has an incorporated virtual machine does not prevent the implementation of other unspecific programs that access the mobile telephone's functions. A security policy implemented by the virtual machine is therefore defined only for the specific programs.
Furthermore, such policies remain confined to the mobile telephone, and no interaction is planned with the SIM card, for example. One such security model is, for example, the MIDP 2.0 model corresponding to the Java language and virtual machine.
Background art techniques also implement security policies that are managed by domain, in which each application belongs to a domain. A domain defines access rights to precisely defined functionalities, and even to all the telephone's functionalities. In this case all applications must belong to a domain. Consequently, if an application requires specific rights, a new domain must be defined and allocated to it. In other words this involves redefining the rights for all the functionalities of the mobile telephone in which the application is being executed, including for the functionalities that the application does not use. This occupies a large memory capacity.
When rights are managed by domain, rights are updated by domain, in other words for all the applications belonging to the said domain. It is consequently impossible to update rights for a specific application independently from the other applications.